The owner of a Shirley barber shop is celebrating after marking more than three decades in business.

Andy ‘Bandy’ Smith opened The Barber Shop on Howard Road 34 years ago in 1991, where he’s been joined by his friend and colleague, Rob Barbour, for the past 31 years.

“All my childhood, I wanted to be a carpenter,” said Bandy.

“In my last year at senior school, I saw the careers master and he said, ‘why don’t you be a barber?’

“So, something in my head clicked but then in my first job I couldn’t get a barber apprenticeship, and I was an apprentice welder for three months, but I kept looking for other jobs and then I got my first job as a barber at 16, in St Mary’s Street, before eventually being able to open my own place.

“I remember the night before we opened, my car was parked outside the barbers, it was a yellow Escort, and someone stole the till out of it.

“I came in the next morning, and I forgot to bring any change with me, which made for an interesting first day.”

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Bandy Smith inside The Barber Shop (Image: Newsquest) Having served the community for more than three decades, both Bandy and Rob have cut hair for as many as four generations of the same family.

Rob said: “The ones that get you are the people who bring their children in, and the dad will say ‘you gave me my first haircut,” and then you wonder where all the years have gone and then you’re cutting the hair for as many as four different generations of the same family.

“It’s quite nice that people remember us and want to keep coming back to us, hopefully it means we’re doing something right.”

With 34 years behind him, Bandy, 58, said he had no plans of stopping anytime soon.

He added: “I’ve got no plans of stopping. I’m not very good at sitting around and not doing anything. I can’t even watch a film that’s longer than 90-minutes because I want to keep getting up all the time.

“This is all I’ve ever known, it doesn’t feel like work, it doesn’t feel like a job, I love it.

“We’ve always tried to be as happy as we can be. People go by and they see us, and they wave because we’ve been here so long, and we’ve seen these people for years, seen them grow up.”